


Sixty Seconds to Survival

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Minor Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-13 17:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: There is no last-second rule change, no out for the star-crossed lovers. Katniss dies with the taste of nightlock berries on her tongue. And now the arena timer is counting down from sixty again, and she has to make a plan.





	Sixty Seconds to Survival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Othalla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Othalla/gifts).



The arena of the Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games is quiet. The last two tributes stand back to back in front of the Cornucopia, left hands clasped together, nightlock berries cupped in their right. Cato's body, mauled by mutts but finally killed by Katniss, is at their feet. He doesn't look human anymore.

"Hold them out," Peeta says. "I want everyone to see." The berries glisten dark red in the early morning light; in the outside world, it's almost noon Capitol time - better for ratings - and the lunch crowd is getting anxious. They want to see the Capitol blink. They don't want these kids to die.

President Snow does not care.

Katniss squeezes his hand. "One. Two." Her voice does not waver in the stillness of the arena. "Three!" Another squeeze of Peeta's hand, a heartbeat's hesitation, and the berries are in her mouth. Katniss bites down.

For the first second, the nightlock berries don't taste that bad. They're sweet, almost overly so, and Katniss finally understands why rabbits flock to them as a summer food source. Of course, they don't kill rabbits, but Katniss is seizing before her train of thought gets that far.

Katniss dies in front of the Cornucopia, hand locked with Peeta's in a death grip, the taste of acrid vomit and sickly sweet nightlock on her tongue -

***

Sixty seconds. That's how long she has to decide where to run. In front of her, the Cornucopia shines brightly, almost blindingly; the best supplies, including all the non-knife weapons, are heaped inside. She knows without looking too closely that among those weapons is a strung silver bow and quiver of twelve silver arrows, propped on a mound of blanket rolls. It's meant for her; its reach and grip are more attuned to hers than even Dad's bow in the woods back home. At her back is the sparse piney wood that surrounds Twelve. That's hers, too, but in a different way. In a safer way.

Forty-five seconds. The bow is almost certainly meant to draw her into the Bloodbath, and Haymitch said not to go, but Katniss is fast, and it's only forty yards, a quick scramble, and maybe another sixty to the tree line. (And Peeta broke the rule last time by allying with the Careers. Grabbing a weapon is nothing compared to that.) There are no distance weapons outside of the Cornucopia unless some of the packs contain knives, which would cost Clove precious time. She can make it. Probably. If not, she'll at least be armed.

Thirty seconds. Katniss doesn't look at where Peeta is crouched, five tributes to her right. He distracted her last time; he won't do it again. Silently, she plots her route, avoiding the pitted earth where whatever equipment had been used to place the Cornucopia or supplies had left ruts and looking for easy bags to snag. There's one about thirty yards ahead that looks promising…

Fifteen seconds. She'll grab Clove's knives too, if they're near the bow. Just to piss her off. Katniss is nothing if not petty, and although there's no bandage over her left eyebrow, the memory of her shoulders pinned under Clove's knees, of a cold knife tip outlining her lips, lingers despite it being a new day - no, an _old_ day -

The gong rings, and Katniss leaps forwards, grabbing a pack - there's a bundle of sticks that look like the fake dynamite from Mine Safety class but with grenade fuses (probably explosives for the boy from Three) at the top and a filled water bottle in the side pocket - and swinging it onto her shoulders as she races for the Cornucopia. She's climbing the mound of blanket rolls before half of the tributes have even stepped off their plates, and then the bow is in her hands and it doesn't matter that Marvel is closing in on her. The arrow sails cleanly through the air and into Marvel's throat. Neither Cato nor Glimmer, focused on culling the tributes on the field side of the arena, seem to notice. Katniss jumps down from the pile of blanket rolls, grabs one - the nights in the arena are _cold_ \- and is momentarily debating the risk of retrieving the arrow currently lodged in Marvel's throat versus running directly for the woods and not having it later when she hears a cry. Her head whips around to see Peeta falling to the ground, a knife (where did Clove get the knife?) lodged in his back.

"No!" Katniss knows she shouldn't, that it's dangerous to run towards a Career for the sake of someone who's already dying, but she can't help herself. She steps forwards, hesitates with her hands to her mouth, and it's enough of a distraction for Cato to snap her neck -

***

Sixty seconds. She can't stop even for a second this time. Marvel's on the opposite side of the circle from her; he won't be in her way as she runs from the Cornucopia. Especially if she uses a distraction. (The Careers need the supplies more than she does, and she does know which pack carries explosives…)

Thirty seconds. Katniss glances towards Peeta, who is trying to get her attention. He shakes his head. She glares at him and shakes her head; she needs that bow, and she's not ripping it from Glimmer's hands again. Not if she can help it.

The gong rings, and Katniss jumps off her plate, grabbing the pack and pulling out the bundle of stick grenades. Once she has her bow, she sprints three paces, pulls the pin off the first grenade, and throws it into the Cornucopia's mouth. She doesn't stop to watch what happens; either it will go off or it won't, and either way, she needs to be gone. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a flash of blond hair duck into the border of the field and forest zones. Good. She needs him to stay out of this.

Five seconds later, the Cornucopia erupts into flame; the grenades must not have been pure explosives after all. Marvel and Glimmer change course from following Katniss to trying to save supplies. At the edge of the forest, Katniss primes and throws another grenade before continuing to run away. Her aim is slightly off - it lands at Glimmer's feet rather than between her and Marvel - but the effect is just as distracting to the Careers.

The effect is also to set the grass surrounding the Cornucopia - and, eventually, the fields behind it - on fire, because Soon-to-Be-Ex-Gamemaker #4 (Environmental Specialty) didn't think that anyone would commit arson on this scale and because there aren't sufficient water reservoirs on-site to call up a good rainstorm until the blaze has already spread wildly out of control. By sunset, the sky is too smoky to clearly make out the faces of dead tributes, but Katniss thinks she spots Glimmer and Marvel and Cato (not Clove, who she'll still have to watch out for, but _holy shit, she really just managed to kill most of the Career pack in one go)_ , and there's a flash of blond hair and a winning smile after Thresh that can only be Peeta.

It bothers her more than it should that he's died; she's spent the past month watching him brush with death, after all. Katniss sips at her water bottle and tries not to cry.

Before dawn the next morning, three parachutes come down: more of the grenades (or, as the labeling puts it, _Magnesium-Trinitrotoluene Incendiary Devices)_ , a respiratory mask like the ones Katniss has seen some of the miners wear on occasion, and a half gallon of water. The last object makes her nervous; Haymitch never sent her water before, and she still has half a bottle left before dehydration would become even a specter of an issue. Something must be different this time. She rearranges her pack (which contains iodine, a first aid kit with tracker jacker antivenom, three meals' worth of dried food, a spool of wire, and a wicked serrated blade that will come in handy for dropping tracker jacker nests on people… not that she has anyone to drop them on anymore) to fit the explosives and extra water, puts on the mask, and starts wandering in the vague direction of the pond.

Sure enough, the pond is drained by the time she gets there. There's still plenty of mud, and the lilies and katniss plants are still there, but the water is gone. Katniss harvests the katniss tubers - no use draining her food supplies yet - and scales the tallest tree she can find;  from the top of it, she can see that storm clouds are gathered on the other side of the arena, where the fields are. That must be where the water went.

Katniss systematically combs the woods for a water source over the next few days, setting snares and foraging plants every few hours. She tries not to think about the bottles she's leaving behind, half-buried behind nightlock bushes. Some of her snares turn up sprung but empty, and Katniss thinks it's Foxface following her, but she's not sure. She sleeps with the knife in her hand and both eyes open. She hates being in the arena alone with no one to watch her back.

On the fifth day in the arena, the creeks start to refill, and Katniss sighs in relief. Creeks means no more dependency on sponsors for water even if she will have to alter her snare route slightly. She walks as far away from her buried bottles as she can.

On the seventh day, just before noon, the mockingjays start singing "The Hanging Tree" less than five minutes before Clove, badly burned and half-mad with anger, comes crashing into the clearing. Katniss silently thanks Rue (at least, she assumes it's Rue) for the warning as she aims shots at Clove's heart, throat, shoulder, eye. Only the last, at an awkward angle that makes it just on this side of survivable, connects; she must be wearing some kind of body armor. Before Katniss can aim again, there's a knife in her stomach and a fist in her face. All she can manage to do is shove the arrow in Clove's eye deeper, hoping it does some more damage, hoping it kills her so that they both die here -

***

Sixty seconds. She only really needs to run from the Cornucopia if there's someone to chase her; she can probably draw and aim fast enough to kill all the Careers if she wanted. And she does want to; she wants them all dead here, now, before they kill her or Peeta or Rue.

Forty-five seconds. She scans the field. Marvel and Glimmer are both opposite her, separated by the girl from Nine and the boy from Five. They're joking, laughing with each other. Probably about how they'll kill the kids between them. The girl from Four is in front of the lake and is eyeing the boy from Nine. The boy from Four looks to be about thirteen; his gaze switches between the field behind him, the pack in front of him, and Thresh, who is to his left.

Thirty seconds. Cato and Clove will be the trickiest. Clove is only two spots away from Peeta, and Cato is only three spots away from her; both are in position to do damage if they realize what's going on. She'll have to be fast, then. Marvel, then Clove, then Glimmer, then Cato, then the girl from Four.

Fifteen seconds. She shakes her head at Peeta. He frowns and shakes his head right back.

The gong rings, and Katniss races to the Cornucopia. She doesn't bother to pause to scoop up a pack; either this plan works or she will be very dead. Once she grabs the bow, she stays at the top of the mound of blanket rolls - better vantage point, like for turkey hunting, and harder for anyone to get to her, like when she and Gale got on the wrong side of a wild dog pack - and starts firing.

 _One._ Marvel falls, and arrow in his throat. Glimmer shrieks and rifles through the pack at her feet. _Two._ Clove goes down, knife still in her hand. Glimmer is still looking for something; probably not a good sign, but she's not running towards the Cornucopia. Cato is. The other tributes are starting to scatter. _Three._ Cato takes an arrow to the heart. Glimmer pulls out something metal - a knife? - from the pack and flings it at Katniss. It grazes her left shoulder, which is closer than Glimmer ever got with a bow. _Four._ Glimmer falls. Peeta is standing still in shock. _Five._ The girl from Four slumps over; she's holding the head of the boy from Nine underwater.

Katniss grabs two packs from inside the Cornucopia, a blanket roll, and an extra first aid kid and walks over to Peeta. He's gaping at her.

"Come along, sweetheart," she says, voice flat and even. "I don't like the open ground."

"Me neither," Peeta says, and they walk into the forest. Eight cannons boom; it's low for a Bloodbath. _(Of course it's low for a Bloodbath; the Careers all died before they could properly start murdering twelve-year-olds,_ Katniss thinks to herself but doesn't say.) They settle by a small stream to watch the anthem and catch a few hours of sleep. They're woken the next morning by a wave of fire that forces them and the kids from Seven together. Katniss fires without thinking.

"They're so young," Peeta whispers. They're not that young - fourteen and fifteen - but with arrows in their chests, malnourished and dehydrated and terrified, they look it.

"I know," Katniss says as she rearranges their supplies to prepare for the next catastrophe. "Let's… try to avoid doing that again."

Two days later, it's packs of wild dogs. Then a flood wipes out the field section of the arena. Then something they don't see - probably mutts - drives the girl from Eight into their camp as they cook dinner; she crashes back out without seemingly noticing. Two weeks into the games, after a round of fireballs, Katniss and Peeta rest beneath a tree that hosts a subdued tracker jacker nest, and don't wake when they hear sawing.

Katniss wakes when the nest crashes down on her. She dies in dreams of her father and the mines and Rue - Rue who's twelve and too young for this, Rue who probably just dropped a nest of tracker jackers on them - dying with a spear in her stomach -

***

Sixty seconds. Run for the bow, distract the Careers, but _don't set the arena on fire this time_. The pile of blanket rolls is awfully unstable looking, and she could probably knock it over in Glimmer and Marvel's general direction; from what she can dimly remember of training, both of them _look_ graceful while killing people, but that didn't translate to agility. They'd probably be a bit like the hurdles back at school races, which had always turned Leevy from elegant part-horse to frantically avoiding falling on her face.

Thirty seconds. Peeta shakes his head at her. Katniss gives him her biggest, slyest grin (for the cameras) and a shooing hand motion (as a cue to run away from this mess). He nods hesitantly.

The gong rings, and Katniss races forwards, grabbing the pack with explosives (it has a filled bottle of water, and they might come in handy later, after all) and heaving it onto her shoulders without stopping. Once the bow is in her hands, she shoves the pile of blanket rolls (and the pyramid of barrels next to them, for good measure) towards the field area of the arena, where Glimmer and Marvel are starting to stalk towards her. The Cornucopia is on top of a slight hill that causes the objects to tumble down in a mess of directions, but most of them are directly in the pair's path. They struggle to navigate around them.

Katniss sprints for the trees. She doesn't bother to look for Peeta; he's probably already disappeared into the fields of grain. Thankfully, Clove seems too occupied with slower moving targets to aim at her. Katniss moves deeper into the woods, jogging when the terrain's flat, walking when it's not. She has a full bottle of water, but it won't last long; she needs to get to a body of water as quickly as possible. She keeps her bow drawn for both other competitors and for food, and by the time the Bloodbath cannons start to boom, she has two groosling, shot straight through the eye, each big enough to be almost a day's worth of meals on its own, on her belt.

Hmm. Only ten cannons. She wonders who made it out alive this time who didn't the first time through. The boy from Four, maybe? It doesn't really matter; Katniss isn't even sure if she'd have noticed the difference if the number hadn't changed.

Katniss keeps walking; she needs to reach the pond as quickly as possible, and she doesn't want to watch the girl from Eight die again. She sips water as she goes so as to not get too dehydrated. At dusk, with (hopefully) enough miles between them and enough distraction to (hopefully) avoid detection, Katniss lights a fire to cook the groosling; raw meat is more dangerous than a one-hour flame in a sheltered clearing that's banked immediately after the food is done. She keeps walking in the dark with the aid of her night vision goggles, too wired to sleep.

The anthem plays, and nine pictures flash through the sky. The boys from Four and Five. Both tributes from Six and Seven. The boy from Eight. Both from Nine. The girl from Ten. The girl from Eight sleeps peacefully in a clump of willow trees, wrapped in a blanket she managed to snag as it rolled away from the Cornucopia. The boy from Three waits for the Careers to start patrol and then starts digging at one of the launch platforms; if those landmines have the right wiring… His district partner squints into the dark and wonders how she's supposed to see if the Careers are coming back. Luckily, the Careers are loudly complaining as they come back from their hunt empty-handed, and the first three sets of mines are ferreted away without incident.

Katniss rises with the dawn and continues towards the pond, eating off groosling (thankfully, a very moist meat) as she goes. Her water runs out by midmorning, but she spots pond lillies less than three hours later. Katniss fills her bottle, puts iodine in it, and starts to root for pond lily roots. It's an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon and evening; it's reminiscent of summer days long gone by the lake with her father. Once she has enough roots for the next several days, she starts attempting to camouflage her backpack with the pond mud; given that the pack's natural color is safety vest orange, it's less than effective. She gives up when the anthem starts and finds a nearby tree to sleep in.

The next day is unusually quiet. Katniss continues camouflaging her bag, this time with berries from nearby bushes, which turn the fabric a cross between blood red and vomit brown; once that is sufficient (and covered in a layer of mud), she goes hunting. The girl from Eight finds a stream and constructs a shelter out of willow branches. However, the Capitol is fixated on the two tributes from District Three, who have managed to re-arm the mines they dug up and are debating what to do with them.

"Bury them near the Career camp?" the boy suggests.

"Too risky," the girl says. She's fiddling with a lump of plastic explosive. "It'd be easier to just destroy the supplies."

"But that wouldn't kill them…"

"Do you think _they_ know how to forage for food? It's the Hunger Games. They deserve to go hungry. Or starve."

"How would we do that with these mines?" The girl frowned for a few minutes, considering.

"What's the threshold pressure? We could build that catapult we did for Beginner Mechanics. We even have all the supplies we need," she gestures to the rope and plastic around them, "except for a saw." The parachute drops within an hour.

When the Careers come across Katniss the next afternoon, it is because of not a wall of fire but rather pure chance; they've been getting antsy, eager to hunt down some tributes to up their counts, and she needs to hunt. As soon as she hears them, twenty or thirty or more yards off, she bolts, but it's not fast enough to avoid notice; she's treed before she truly recognizes that Peeta's with them this time.

"Gonna shoot us, fire girl?" Cato sneers before she can start swearing. She's high up enough in the tree that he could easily dodge any arrow she sends down; he's presenting one of the smallest targets he can. (Though, considering it's Cato, an arrow to the eye _is_ tempting…)

"Waste of perfectly good arrows," Katniss says, grinning. "Couldn't use them for meat if they landed in your corpse." She can hear the laughter back in the Capitol (and in the Hob; Greasy Sae is probably cackling right now while Gale wonders what the hell she's doing) as Cato growls. Before she can taunt him further, there's a muffled _boom_ in the distance. The Careers look at each other, confused.

"Must be a cannon," Clove says. Another _boom._ It does not sound like a cannon. Glimmer nods.

"The Threes, probably," she says. "Twelve down, eleven to go!" Katniss glances above her head; there's no tracker jacker nest there. Wrong tree. Damn. She needs to think up another plan.

"Maybe we should go check?" Peeta suggests weakly. Cato scoffs at him.

"What, and leave _her?"_

"If you want me, you'll need to come and get me," Katniss says. Cato grins. It is a very nasty grin.

"I think I will." Katniss scales another thirty feet of tree before Cato crashes back down to Earth and ten more when Marvel makes an attempt. She just watches Glimmer try; the other girl climbs awkwardly, more used to climbing walls that trees, and gingerly, as if she's nursing broken ribs. As Katniss reaches into her bag to grab a snack, her fingers brush against something long and cylindrical. The grenades. She'd forgotten she had those.

The Careers bicker back and forth about what they should do next. Marvel thinks they should set the tree on fire; Clove points out a tree as thick around as Katniss' wouldn't burn well. Katniss starts to hum "the Hanging Tree", hoping Peeta will get the message. The anthem plays and shows no deaths for the day; the arguing picks up pace. Two hours later, the Careers finally start to settle down for the night with Peeta taking first watch. It's another hour before he settles a pack on his shoulders and creeps away from the campsite.

Once he's made it thirty yards, Katniss takes out one of the grenades. _It should only take one,_ she thinks. _I set half the arena on fire with two. One should be enough._ Carefully, she pulls the pin, throws it, and covers her ears and shuts her eyes.

Half a second later, the grenade hits the forest floor in the midst of the Career pack, causing them to stir. Glimmer notices that Peeta's no longer keeping watch, staring up into the tree at where Katniss was pretending to doze; she's managed to get to her feet and scramble a few steps away when the grenade goes off and the night erupts into fire.

Katniss knows it's done when the tree she's in, which had shook from the force of the blast, stills again. Her ears are ringing; she can hear screams, but they sound far off, distant, not directly below her as the Career tributes slowly die from burns or internal bleeding. (Whichever Career slept closest to the blast is scattered in pieces, already dead. He's lucky.) Katniss grabs three arrows from her quiver and hopes the cameras can't see her hands shake as she fires.

"Peeta!" Katniss calls. He's probably still within hearing range, and it doesn't matter who hears them now. Not with all but one of the Careers dead and the other probably grievously injured.

"Katniss!" Peeta yells. His face is bone white as he stares at the bodies of his former allies. "Are you alright?"

"I think so." Carefully, so as to not set herself on fire (Caesar would laugh himself to death with that one), Katniss climbs down the tree. Peeta holds out his hand, and she takes it as they walk away from the fire. He doesn't comment as she leans against his shoulder, partly for comfort, partly to conceal her shakiness. "What happened to… probably Glimmer?"

 _Get to the lake._ Glimmer races through the forest, stripping off burning clothing as she goes. _Got to get to the lake._ There are cannons booming, too loud and not loud enough - she's ruptured an eardrum. _Get to the lake. Treat your burns. Kill Katniss Everdeen. We introduce the victor of the 74th Annual Hunger Games, Glimmer Glenvale!_ She reaches the lake and dives right in, the cold water paradise against her scorched skin. _Oh God, this totally ruins my tan - no one gives a shit about your tan, you're_ covered _in second- and third-degree burns, how do you treat third-degree again - oh God, my_ hair _…_

Two minutes later, Glimmer surfaces. There isn't much light to go on - the night-glasses had been in Marvel's pack and are now destroyed, but something about the ground around the Cornucopia looks… wrong. Too flat, and not flat enough. It takes her a second to recognize that their supply horde - enough food and medicine for months, and enough weapons to arm every tribute four times over - has been destroyed - blasted apart, by what she can see of it. That was probably the pair of cannons they heard that afternoon.

She'll see what she can find in the morning; a buried medical kit, a case of ration bars, a duelling staff, _something_ has to have survived, and she can use it. Besides, she aced the field portions of her training, when she had to rough it with nothing but her wits and a reasonably sized knife, and now she has sponsors, wonderful sponsors who will send her things like three containers of burn cream and bandages and some alcohol to numb the pain.

There's not much to be found the next morning - weapons at the back of the Cornucopia untouched by the heat, some dried fruit here, an empty water bottle there. Still, it half-fills Glimmer's scavenged backpack, and she's armed with a nicely weighted spear and some knives, both weapons she's at least passable with. (Passable is more than enough to kill Katniss Everdeen, she thinks.) Parachutes fall with water and meat and a fresh change of clothes - hers are massively burned through and half-discarded - and Glimmer sets off into the wilderness to find the Girl on Fire.

She finds the tributes from Three first. They don't put up much of a fight.

 _Final eight,_ Glimmer thinks, and she can't keep the grin off her face. Considering that half her face is a solid sheet of blisters right now, it's not exactly charming, but she doesn't care anymore. _Final eight contender, last of the Careers, Glimmer Glenvale!_

Katniss is showing Peeta what berries _not_ to collect (thankfully, he's good at differentiating the color of nightlock and the nearby blueberries, which is… not a method she can rely on, but if it works for him, it works) when two cannons boom. They both duck, and she draws her bow.

"Probably not near here," Peeta says.

"And we're in better shape than the Career," Katniss agrees. They do not sound convinced. Still, nothing happens that day, even if there are six photos in the sky that night: all the Careers but Glimmer and both tributes from Three. Katniss counts the tributes on her fingers.

"We're in the final eight now, aren't we?" In District Twelve, someone's conducting interviews of their friends and families. It's strange to think about life going on outside of the arena.

"I guess we are."

The next day is also calm - no other tributes in sight. Glimmer wanders aimlessly through the woods, cursing as she can't find sign of Katniss or Peeta or anyone at all. Frustrated, she loops back towards the Cornucopia, hoping that she can retrace her path to the explosion and then find Katniss' away from it. The girl from Eight, who's built herself a shelter in a clump of willow trees, watches, as still as she can make herself, and hopes her stomach doesn't rumble until Glimmer is out of hearing range. In the trees, Rue raises her slingshot.

Rue's face is in the sky that night. Even though they haven't teamed up since the first iteration, weeks ago by now, even though she killed her, Katniss tries not to cry.

The next day is unnaturally still for the arena; there's not even a cannon. Katniss comes across a flock of groosling, and she and Peeta carefully build and later bank a fire to roast them while telling stories about their childhood. Somehow, it feels less fake than it did the first time around in the cave. There are no cannons. The next day is quiet, too; Katniss wonders when the quiet will be broken up by a pack of mutts or something. Of course, that night, Claudius Templesmith has a special announcement to help ratchet up tension for the bored viewers at home.

"Tributes of the 74th Annual Hunger Games!" He says once the anthem concludes. "There will be a feast at sunset tomorrow night at the Cornucopia. In addition, if they so wish, the remaining two tributes who have partaken of this feast may elect to both win rather than fight for a single Victorship." Katniss and Peeta share a look.

"Not worth it," they say in unison, then laugh. Too much can happen before they reach the final two (if they would _be_ the final two); they're not risking a feast, where there could be only a moldy loaf of bread and six other angry tributes eager for the same opportunity. _(It's already been withdrawn once,_ is all Katniss can think, though Peeta doesn't know it. _I'm not going through that again.)_ When the stream they've been camping at the next morning has dried up, they're not laughing.

"The lake," Peeta says. "They need us at the lake. For the feast." Katniss nods grimly, and they start walking in that direction. It takes most of the next day to approach the clearing where they had entered the arena - and, according to Templesmith, the feast will be held. Katniss draws her bow and sets up a blind in a tree. Beneath her, Peeta crouches in the shadows.

As the sun sets, there's a whirr of hovercraft blades. In the middle of the clearing, which is scattered with rubble, an ornate table is set down. It's loaded with food: glistening jellies, rolls of rye bread, bowls of blueberries, jugs of water and soda and probably wine, platters of dark brown newts and toads (weird choice, but Gamemakers are always strange people), piles of mushrooms _(never pick mushrooms you're unsure of,_ her father had told her once, and mushrooms hadn't been covered in training, but half of those look like Fly Agaric), and… those are definitely pokeweed roots. They look exactly like the ones she dug up when she was twelve and too hungry to know better. Not generally lethal (though these might be modified), but not pleasant to eat, and it makes her suspicious of the rest of the table's contents.

Katniss looks at the blueberries again. She can't be sure from this distance - without the attached leaves, she can't really be sure unless she holds them in her hands - but she thinks there's nightlock berries in there, too. Maybe some of it's safe - Katniss isn't sure what could be wrong with the bread - but she's betting that all of it's poisonous. A way to cull the desperate and the unwary.

(And at least two of them probably won't recognize it - three if you count Peeta. Foxface and the girl from Eight are city kids who have never spent time foraging before the arena; they wouldn't know pokeweed from any other root until they started throwing up. The boy from ten might not know better, either; she's not even sure it grows in District Eleven. Glimmer was almost definitely taught to recognize poisonous plants as a Career. One of the little ways the arena is unfair.)

Before Katniss can try to say something to Peeta, there's movement in the Cornucopia. Foxface. She dashes out, grabs jugs of water and plates of food, and ducks the spear thrown at her as she runs back into the woods. Katniss raises her bow, looking for the thrower; it's probably Glimmer. The boy from Ten and girl from Eight, both realizing that the element of surprise is lost, run forwards, trying to grab what they can from the table. Neither reach it before they fall with a knife in their back. The shots aren't particularly accurate; their deaths aren't particularly quick or painless. Glimmer steps out into the open.

The first thing Katniss notices are the burns. Half her face is pink; the other half is badly blistered. Her long blond hair's gone, likely burned off. Her left arm is wrapped in bandages, and there's a smaller one on her right bicep that partially encases her shoulder. When she walks to lean against the table, she favors her right leg.

"Olly olly oxen free!" Glimmer sing-songs. "Come on out, Fire Girl. You and Loverboy. Come out, come out, wherever you are! I know you're here; you need the water. Come out, now, unless you're just a coward shooting from a tree like that shrimp from El-" Glimmer keels over backwards, an arrow through her heart. It's probably a nicer death than she deserves. Katniss climbs down from her perch.

"Was she that crazy earlier?" Katniss asks tentatively. Peeta shakes his head; he's still gaping at her corpse.

"She was convinced that she'd win - imitated Claudius announcing it and everything - but not like that," he says. There's a rustle from the long grasses on the opposite side of the field. Katniss aims her bow without thinking.

Another cannon booms. Thresh is dead. She must have the highest kill count ever at this point if you count the loops. Probably including Haymitch's year.

"Only Foxface left," Peeta says to console her. He doesn't need to; she doesn't feel anything but numb anymore.

"She'll take care of herself," Katniss says. "The food is-" a cannon booms "-poisoned." That was probably nightlock then; too short-acting to be anything else she recognizes. "We're going home."

"Neither of you have partaken of the feast," Claudius Templesmith says. Katniss and Peeta exchange a look and head for the table. Katniss tries to work out what the Capitol's endgame in this is; is she supposed to slip Peeta nightlock? Are they both supposed to off themselves by accident (or on purpose), the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers? Are the foods that look the same different levels of toxicity so that one of them can "accidentally" perish, leaving the other behind as a sole victor? (Is everything on the table lethal when cooked up in a Capitol lab? Are they supposed to be steering clear of the feast and therefore killing each other so as to not die?)

She takes one of the pokeweed roots - the only item on the table she reliably recognizes as (probably) not (immediately) lethal - and splits it in half, just to be safe. Peeta nods. "On three?" he suggests jokingly. She shrugs, shoulders tense, thinking of the last time they did something "on three". "One. Two. Three."

Pokeweed tastes horrible, but she only takes a few bites before they're announced co-victors of the Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games, and the Hovercraft sends ladders down -

***

Sixty seconds. Katniss hastily wipes her palms on the skirt of her dress. It's a soft butter yellow that glows like candlelight and flows around her like candle wax. There's a matching ribbon in her hair. It makes her look like a little girl, not someone who will never be able to scrub all the blood from underneath her gold-painted fingernails, but that's the point. She and Peeta need to look harmless, or everyone dies.

Thirty seconds. She wonders where Peeta is, if Haymitch gave him the same talk about showing deference to the Capitol and playing up the love angle as much as possible. She hasn't seen him since they landed back at the Tribute Center and were hustled off by different medical teams. She hopes he's alright.

Ten seconds. Katniss puts on her most winning smile (it's not a very winning smile, but it will do) and braces herself to run.

The stage lights come on, and Katniss and Peeta run from opposite sides of the stage towards each other. Caesar Flickerman chuckles and guides them to the loveseat set up for them to watch the highlights reel. "Now, before we start, a few questions from our viewers at home. Katniss, Quartz in District Two wants to know how you made your strategy for getting to the bow so quickly. That was an awfully impressive piece of cunning, especially so early in the games." Back home, Caesar's words are intercut with the clip.

"Well, I knew the bow was my best weapon," Katniss said, "and that I'd need it to survive in the arena long-term. And I knew that I was fast - but probably not fast enough to make it there and back to the woods without getting attacked by the Careers. Everything else was just a bit of luck and some practice."


End file.
